DANA POINT, CA-- As the first political convention of the 1996 General Election year gets underway in San Diego, California, Americans are given an opportunity to consider the state of their nation: It is NOT good. Yet the reality of the country's dissolution is not reflected by the psuedo-optimism of the mass media. Election campaigns are the medicine for all that ails the failing republic, for elections are the device the politicos use to whip up popular support for their programs.

Elections contain the legacy of the Broken Campaign Promise. The Broken Campaign Promise is epitomized by George Bush's famous decree, "READ MY LIPS." The Campaign Promise is that guarantee in the months preceding election, when everything seems possible. The Broken Campaign Promise is that which follows election, when everyone comes down to Earth to realize that powerful sinister forces really do control Washington, D.C., and they have no intention of granting anyone relief.

The population looks for someone to challenge the Beltway Culture, and the political insiders look for someone who can be trusted to be, as Sam Donaldson said of Jack Kemp, when Kemp was selected as Dole's running mate, "SAFE." The major political parties -- the Democrats and the Republicans -- are smug in their control of the machinery of government, and there is the taint of arrogance in every officeholder. Every wielder-of-power betrays a definite attitude about "what will be tolerated," with the innuendo underlying every insinuation that what will be used to back up any position will be NAKED FORCE.

When stripped of all the rhetoric, the Federal Government is nothing more than a police force, and the state governments are junior police forces. Whenever uneducated citizens attempt to boast about the system of government in the United States, they always quote the preamble to the Constitution of 1787 or the Declaration of Independence, which suggest that political power in the United States is limited, and used in the best interests of the people. The reality, however, is that neither the Declaration of Independence, or the Preamble to the Constitution, are legally binding, and the Government of the United States has functioned in a manner which completely defies the values held by most Americans.

The republic is not the only system of government that has been known in north America. Canada today is constituted as a constitutional kingdom, a fact that is little known in the United States. The conventional wisdom in the United States is that anything traditional is un-modern, but republics go back to the days of Rome and Greece, so there is nothing modern about a republic. There is also nothing PROGRESSIVE about republics, this is the BIG LIE surrounding the fascistically-oriented political parties. While the Democrats and the Republicans weigh down the statutes with new catagories of crime, and borrow money to build the prisons that they know will be necessary to hold all the Americans who violate their new laws, they go on television and tell the voters they don't want to turn the United States into a police state! TOO LATE!

The Democrats, the supposed "liberals," compete with the Republicans, the supposed "conservatives," in ways to display their alleged patriotism to the country, while both parties hatch plots that will undermine the other party's credibility. More thought goes into arranging and financing Butt-Man and Joint-Man -- actors who follow the candidates around dressed up, respectively, as a walking cigarrette, and a walking marijuana cigarrette -- than goes into the actual running of the government. Mass media "news" shows spend hours speculating about the potency of the various candidates and their staffs, giving valuable air time to their favorites under the disguise of objective "reporting." The very process by which a field of candidates is narrowed down to two high-profile selectees for President should be subject to scrutiny, because regardless of the state of the country, candidates with integrity never surface.

The only thing that could have possibly made Bill Clinton re-electable was the selection of Bob Dole as the Republican challenger. The only person who made Bill Clinton seem appealing was the man who always bore the slavemaster visage. Grim and sour, Bob Dole made Clinton's educated incompetence appear less threatening. Yet the whole house of cards is slowly coming down. The significance of the presidency is lessening as the population learns from two centuries of double-dealing, that the president is no king.

Americans are trained to think of kings as dictators. There is a "pooh-pooh" reaction Americans go into, which is comparable to a minor seizure or brain hemorrhage. Americans expect the president to have majesty, without understanding that no leader with a four year term can have an influence over a government that has an institutional memory of 220 years. Kingship in its essence is ceremonial, while the presidency at its essence is powerful. This is a very important difference because the President of the United States possesses dictatorial power, while the monarches of Europe and the Third World possess AUTHORITY.

The educational standards of the United States have deliberately confused authority with power, because the system of government in the United States was set up to rely on power instead of authority as its principal tool of social control. Power is the ability to act, while authority suggests the legal right to act; while the two can be combined, in the system of control developed under the republic power came to displace authority. Traditional societies are run by genuine authorities who are the tribal chiefs and elders of the society, and their authority derives from the voluntary consent of their peoples; while the republican society in the United States is run by a wealthy elite, who disguise their control with the euphemism of the "will of the people," but whose control is backed up by a powerful vast police infrastructure.

The reason the Founding Fathers had to resort to force in their system of government was primarily because they possessed an enslaved population, which they knew would seek freedom if given the opportunity. They also knew that their establishment of a republic was a departure from traditional, customary government, and the people of the colonies were deeply suspicious of their intentions. That was why the Convention to draft the Constitution of 1787 was held in secret, behind sealed doors and windows. The American Revolution was a reactionary impulse, embraced by the landed elite; there were no true issues of social justice at stake. "Taxation without representation" was a dry legalistic appeal to property-owners, at a time when the majority were not the owners of property.

The American kingship which prevailed up until 1776 was a traditional institution, on par with the hereditary chief of an Indian tribe. It is this tribal origin that disturbs the American Middle Class, who have been taught to view social institutions as machinery, in which the sentimentality of family and tribe seem superfluous and irrelevant. Yet this affection for the family and tribe are the very root driving forces of modern nationalism, and the failure of the American Establishment to come to terms with nationalist movements resulted in the first real setbacks for American power.

The Washingtonian Presidency is on its last legs. As is the Jeffersonian Congress, and the Marshall Supreme Court. Washington and Jefferson both owned slaves, and it is probable that Jefferson's cousin (and rival) John Marshall also owned slaves. The fact that these men owned other human beings DISQUALIFIES them as role-models of free men. It DISQUALIFIES their government as a government for free people. Furthermore, this is not subject to debate: The people simply reject them. They have no AUTHORITY, and neither do their successors. This country is in a shambles precisely because the Federal and state governments have no authority. And until the politicians, bureaucrats and media pundits want to talk about this missing authority, the war will continue to rage on the streets of America, and more Americans will continue to die.